


Unsaid.

by naonow



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, But Harry has taught him something invaluable, Draco has lost all hope, Draco's POV, M/M, My First AO3 Post, Tragedy, please forgive my English, this is a translation of one of my old fanfictions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 08:04:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11824512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naonow/pseuds/naonow
Summary: The better, the worse. / You know, don't you, that all this is an after. An after him. / You remember. / A life without him, in a world in flames.Or : Draco is (not) coping with Harry's disappearance. Also, the battle is lost.





	Unsaid.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first post on AO3. Please be gentle?  
> I wrote this years ago in French. I've always wanted to try and translate it, and finally did it!  
> So I'll be SUPER grateful to you if you point any mistake.

**Unsaid.**

 

It is so cold tonight.

 

You squeeze your arms around you, in the intrusive dark of your Head Boy room. There was a time when this darkness was reassuring; it felt like home, somehow. It didn't ask anything from you, after all. On the contrary, the lack of light relieved you, pacified you. You felt like yourself, invincible, a prince that nothing could dethrone. You could almost forget the followings days, forget the day and the students' laughs in the frozen-stoned hallways, the childish chatters of the fools who ignored the truth - this truth you knew too well and only sometimes managed to forget, in the dark. You felt far from the future, far from the worst, far from this Dark Lord who was going to reign on everybody's life and mostly on your own, far from murders, from screams, from the wounds that would be inflicted, without any doubt. Sheltered from the day, you felt strong, you felt immortal.

 

You don't really know any more how this dark became an enemy, or when the cold took the banners of your opponent. Since then, however, you have to fight against all these entities that were meant to be your allies, which you thought you'd long grown accustomed to. Since then, in this Head Boy room, you can't appreciate the surrounding loneliness any more. You huddle up under your sheets and you wait for the day, the sun - even if, in the end, nothing really matters. You just want the cold to go away and to stop remembering. Mostly to stop remembering. Since it is your memories that bring you this cold. Your memories are the ones freezing you.

 

Before, you thought you had everything under control. You had your throne, and maybe it was modest but it was yours and you had sat on it with the distinction and grace your ancestors had been teaching you since your birth. You had Hogwarts's dark half behind you, aware of your every little doings, almost intrusive – but you liked that. You loved to be the center of their attention, to know that they were ready to follow you and that every one of those snakes could bite upon a single look from you. You liked that role, though you weren't stupid enough not to know the cruel reality: that it was all a massive joke, a laughing matter really, a child's play whose rules you know by heart and which could only be won by triumphing over a mountain of corpses. Before, you thought it would be all right, that _you_ would be all right, somehow. You were convinced that, when the time would come, you would be able to pronounce all these spells that are yet supposed to stay unsaid and that you would take your place in the Gothic wizard's most sought-after circle, loyal and honored in the shadow of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

 

You smile painfully, thinking that things were indeed different at that time. You know that, don't you? Yes, you know that everything you're living now is an after. An after him. But this, you don't want to think about it.

 

No, you don't want to close your eyes and bury your head in your pillow to search for his scent that time has evaporated. You don't want to despair for not being able to feel him enough, you don't want to imagine his hands and to remember how his existence annihilates all the rest. You don’t want to abandon yourself to the memory of all those nights passed in this Head Boy room, so spacious and so pompous by its name and baroque decoration. You don’t want to shiver while remembering the warmth of those moments, sheltered from the sun, sheltered from prejudice, sheltered from all the tomorrows of the world. You don't want to wish for him to come back, you don’t want to let yourself almost hear his footsteps in the corridor, in front of your room, and the indiscreet sound of his fist against the heavy wood, relentlessly hoping for him to come. You open your eyes and glare at the roof you can barely see on top of your bed, whose sheets are green - like his eyes. You wish you knew when his presence became that indispensable, so you would never live the moment again. So you would never do the same mistakes again. And prevent yourself from enduring all this pain.

 

No. You don't want to. You don't want to close your eyes and search for his arms, - they could be lost in your sheets -, search for his warm and smooth body that makes you think of the Sahara, his curves like dunes and his skin like sand, which dirties your bed as you've always found traces of his presence in it since he touched you. You don't want to. You don't want to close your eyes and think about him. You don't want to and yet, even with your eyes wide open, fixated on the roof in this darkness that forgot to be reassuring, it is still for him that you lose your mind.

 

Then, your memories come back. You feel the dark surrounding your mind and you dive in your memories not to fall, not to vanish into nothingness, since nobody is going to catch you, not even him. You know no-one really cares about you and that many would feel freer if you were gone, that a whole crowd would be delighted if you vanished in this mad and mortal cold that is going to take you. You grit your teeth and you remember, you escape from this room which whispers you his absence every second. And you remember too well, in the end. You remember that moment when everything changed.

 

You know they sometimes say _for better or for worse_ and when this sentence comes to your mind, you wince. You never believed, not for one second, that there could have been a better worth the pain between you two, for you two. What you think is this: the worse is sometimes preferable to the better. You think your worse is not theirs, and that your better was nipped in the bud. No, there was nothing to hope for, strictly nothing, for the good reason that you didn't have any future. Neither him, nor you.

 

The better.  
The worse.

 

Of all this, you remember.

 

X.X.X

 

The hallway was empty and the moon far too high in the sky for him to wander there. He hadn't seen you and you were making sure you were moving silently enough to sneak up on him without being noticed. His back was standing perfectly in front of you and he was glaring at the wall - suffice it to say, he was oozing the utmost stupidity, like always. You smiled, thinking you were about to make him pay for the impudence he had shown you the previous days and that the occasion was just too perfect. Nobody can insult you with impunity – and who were you to ignore this opportunity? You almost hold your breath in the excitement preceding the blow he was about to take.

 

\- Malfoy.

His voice surprised you but you didn't let it show. You cursed silently against the cosmic force that gives that two-legged Blast-Ended Skrewt this damned, and quite disturbing, sixth sense. You simply answered, like a reflex:

\- Potter.

He didn't turn around, so you took the initiative to bring yourself closer. He didn’t even look at you. You felt rather upset. Who did he think he was? Who did he think you were?

\- Would you mind telling me what charm brought you out of your dormitory at this time in the night, Potter? Should I remind you that this breach in the school rules is worth taking some points away from your stupid house?

He didn't answer anything, entranced by the wall in front of him.  
  
\- Tell me, Malfoy. Do you see anything on that wall?

You weren’t expecting _that_. And that is why you looked at the ice-cold bricks, without even commenting on his appalling rudeness. After all, Potter has no education.

\- _Let him do it._  
\- Sorry?  
At last, he was facing you.  
\- Can't you read, Potter? There’s a writing that says _Let him do it._

His eyes stared at yours in a weird way, and you remember that you asked yourself what poorly chosen selection of genes had created such a colour. The seconds flew; you stayed silent. Your throat gets dry when you thing about it now, but the truth is that you didn’t dare say anything. His eyes reflected such a great upheaval. And then, suddenly, he smiled. Like a firework.

\- I see. That's strange. I see _Do it._ Well, it seems perfect.  
\- Are you kidding me, Potter?  
\- You know I wouldn't dare.

The moment after that, your breath lost himself on his lips and, under an evil spell that you guessed was quite powerful, you didn’t throw him away. You closed your eyes, certain that you were hating it, the sound of his breathing and his smell, the sensation of his hands on your hips and the taste of his mouth, certain that you hated him all the more so and yet, you _let him do it_. And you cursed Hogwarts and its bullshit spells. And you cursed Dumbledore who, even from his grave, was surely responsible for everything. That old madman. You reopened your eyes to look at the red writing on the wall, but it had disappeared. You rolled your eyes, and you found the strength to push him away.

  
\- And tell me, Potter, what the hell do you think you're doing?

 

You had put all the disgust you could muster in that question, and he fled before answering anything. You looked at him walking away, forgetting to take the staggering amount of points you had planned to. Instead, you still remember the odd feeling of void that took place in your bowels as he was walking away. Or rather, you recall finding out that this void existed, that it was here, in the pit of your stomach, and that it had been there a long, long time, truth be told. Yet, it took you several months to understand that it was simply because he had filled it, for such a brief moment. Months that were punctuated by his presence, sometimes, in the night, in your pompous and austere Head Boy room.

 

X.X.X

 

The first time he knocked on your door, it was a week after the kiss he had inflicted you. Your eyes hadn’t met during that time. You had thought he regretted – as much as you regretted – that incident. Somehow, it was convenient for you that he didn’t look like he wanted to talk about it, or even just vaguely allude to it. You had surely enough shame for the two of you. Shame for not knowing how to send him away, for not missing the opportunity to use that moment of confusion against him, for not ridiculing him. But then again, all the school would have had to know that Potter the cruddy had dared to kiss the snakes’ prince and you would not have suffered that. Anyway, it was easier to hide behind that idea of dishonour and infamy. When you heard the sound of his fist against the door resonating inside your four walls, you wondered who was the imbecile that was troubling your tranquillity so late in the evening, - it was more than eleven, roughly two hours after curfew. Then you opened the door and he was there, on your doorstep, and his jade eyes stuck into yours like parasites. Tall, proud, his shoulders a little larger than yours perhaps, thumbs in the pockets of his jeans, - and why on earth wasn’t he wearing the mandatory robes? -, his foot standing in the doorway to prevent you from closing it. Emerald was making its way into mercury. You couldn't turn away.

 

\- Potter. What gives me the tremendous displeasure of your visit at this terribly late hour?

  
Your voice was meant to sound as unpleasant as usual. His eyes set ablaze and, for all answer, he attacked your lips. There is no better word for it. It was a fight and, somehow, you're sure that he wanted to hurt you. His mouth took yours by storm, his lips were scouts, and then his tongue breeched your defences and you were almost defeated before even defending yourself. So you tried to meet him every time he was gaining ground, you tried to enter in him as much as he was entering in you, and both of you were losing yourself in the other. He wouldn't be the victor, whatever it would cost you. He wouldn't be the victor.

 

The door closed itself behind your two breathless bodies. He lost his hands in your almost white hair while you slipped yours under his shirt and felt sweat on this sun-kissed skin. He exuded sensuality and you felt yourself go in a desire you had never felt, for anyone. You passed the indecent barrier of his belt in order to feel his breath break and hear a moan slip from his throat. It was like a blow, like a successful assault. You smiled, but that was before he pressed his pelvis against yours and before you felt him against you and physically hurt, feeling his need of you. He wouldn't be the victor. You took him to your bed while your eyes were reluctant to break from another for too long. The green sea flew into your melting metal. Electric. Painful. Who could have been able to take him away from you then? Potter wouldn't be the victor.

 

He had not to be. He couldn’t be.

 

Your clothes flew in the dark room. So soon, you were naked against each other, almost desperate. You didn't know where that desire, - that need of him you hadn't known you had -, came from. _Let the devil have my soul, Potter won't be the victor._ You sought to lose him more than once in the delights you inflicted him and you certainly should have been successful if he hadn't been so inventive and skilled. You knew it was his first time, you had felt it in some of his hesitations - they never lasted, however -, and you didn't understand how a single of his moves could drive you so close to madness. A fucking novice. But it was Potter, after all, this fucking stupid Gryffindor, stubborn and so full of flaws, The-Boy-Who-lived-Again-And-Again-And-Again, Potter in one word. The hero archetype, full of good will and, damn him, full of talents and resource. Potter, who somehow always ended up knocking you out and crushing you laughingly. This time, however, Potter wouldn't be the victor. You were going to take him away, to ravage him, to destroy his will to ever defy you again.

 

It was a war.

Surely lost even before being fought.

 

You came one against each other and one in each other many times that night, until exhaustion became stronger than greed and you became aware of the sticky liquid that was on your skins and of the ungodly smell in the room. You felt like at the end of a strange dream, as insufferable and tearing as voluptuous and providential.

 

You know he wasn't the victor.

For the good reason that they weren’t any. Nor, for that matter, any loser.

 

And yet, when he put his clothes back on and left without looking at you, you felt as empty and ravaged as one can be after a stinging defeat. You already knew you wanted him to come back, but you didn't want to admit it to yourself. Not so soon. No, not yet. You didn't want Potter to take such a place in your life. But it was already too late. Far too late. Therefore, when he came back, four evenings later, of course you let him in. Despite him being him. Even though everything in your gestures reminded you mercilessly that you were not the one with whom he could have shared anything else than these moments of night.

 

He came back, once, twice, thrice, and then you stopped counting. You don't really know how you grotesquely came to feel like you are only alive when he crosses the door of your godforsaken room. He always comes when you expect him the less, after two weeks of longing or the very day after one of his visits. You never asked anything. You take him in when he comes, you receive him and you let him go.

 

You let the cold come back.

 

X.X.X

 

And tonight it is so cold, oh god, so cold now in your arms. You rub your hands against your arms, trying to warm yourself up, but it is vain. You brutalise your skin, everywhere, trying to make the cold, which seems to have taken all your pores, go away. Your white, translucent skin is slowly freezing. It is freezing slowly, in an agony that will kill you for sure. It is freezing and you don’t know how you’re supposed to chase away the frostbites from the fragile shelters they found on your milky skin’s grain.

 

When he’s here, he only has to put his hand on you for all idea of cold to disappear completely from your mind. So you think that, maybe, if you rub it long enough and hard enough, you too can make it go away.

 

Under your hands, like under his hands.

 

You laugh and you abruptly put an end to this nonsense. It is a strange laugh. Not an ounce of humor, of joy. It is not even cynical, it is just disillusioned. It is an empty laugh. A cold laugh, just like this absence of warmth that devours you, in these sheets that should be comfortable.

 

Nothing is soft. Nothing is tender.

 

You know that, perhaps even better than anybody. You know the delusions, the lies. You think that nothing is true and you're probably right. You laugh and you think that you could never ever replace his hands, certainly not with yours. It's just him, you know that so well that you wish you didn't. But you, you only want to be able to feel his hands and forget. Oh yes, you wish you could sometimes believe that what you think of the world is just not true. If only to imagine that this nameless cold can disappear. Vanish. Obviously, for that to happen, he would have to be here.

 

He is not.

 

X.X.X

 

In your head, a cascade of dancing memories is pouring and making you as mad as sad. You don't moan, though you feel an urge to. You don't suffocate, though you can hardly breathe. These are things you didn't learn to do when you were younger, and things he didn't want to teach you either.

 

Once, only once, you asked him why. Why you. His features hardened, he frowned and his mouth tightened. He answered that you, at least, you wouldn't worry. You wouldn't mourn him. You wouldn't love him.

 

You didn't say a thing. You held back the insults that came up in your throat, the “screw you, Potter” and all the delicacies he would have deserved. You understood that he didn't want you to grow fond of him, so you did your best to let him be as distant as he wanted. You learned how to let him go. And above all, you tried to learn how not to suffer from his absence. You would have liked so much not to miss him, wouldn't you?

 

And yet, tonight, what you still hear are not his goodbyes but his hellos, and they sound like bells ringing an hour and an age that is now over. You don't remember the times when he said goodbye to you and looked so sure of him that it hurt – but you didn't say anything nor let it show, and for that, one cannot but notice your education had been in the right hands. You don't remember either the times when his indifference showed up again or, - even worst -, when marks of hatred ended up on his face and you hoped you had them wrong.

 

On the contrary, and you think he would resent you if he knew it, you remember the time when he fell asleep in your arms and when you didn't wake him. You remember the brief moments when you had the paradoxically fleeting and persistent impression that he felt something strong for you, a feeling you refused to call love but wished for so hard you were losing your mind. You remember the day he offered you the amulet you always keep with you, although it's not of any use anymore. You remember his smiles, the true ones, the ones he showed so sparingly, despite what one could have thought.

 

You remember so well.

 

X.X.X

 

You didn't talk, at the beginning. It was like an unsaid agreement that you were firmly decided to respect, to avoid losing these encounters. He came, you had sex and he went away again. It was as simple as that. He screamed when he came, like a liberation, and you thought that he was emptying himself from all his grief and anger. You were like his release, a way for him to forget and to get rid of a weight he couldn’t bear anymore. Then, you remembered he didn't come to see you for love.

 

No, Potter doesn't want you for love.

 

Then came the night when he started to cry while you were kissing his shivering chest. You wiped his tears with your hands but others came to replace them too soon. You hold him in your arms, you rocked your hips against his to take him away in pleasure but he kept on crying and you didn’t know what to do, how to touch him, how to make him forget. You buried your head in his neck and his arms came to imprison you. He wept like that for a long time, his tears sliding on your shoulders, and you waited. Then he began to talk.

 

He said things like:

\- You know, Malfoy, I never asked for anything. It's not my fault if today people are dying or if some others are being tortured while trying to protect my existence. It's not my fault and yet sometimes I feel in their gazes that they resent me for not doing anything, even if there's not a single one of them to dare say anything. They think their saviour is taking quite a long time to save them, while their families are dwindling and the weight of the deaths keeping on getting heavier. But, Malfoy, tonight I am here in your room and I mourn my dead too. As much as they mourn theirs.

  
You didn't answer anything. Nobody had ever taught you how to console.

  
\- Malfoy, tell me, have I no right to cry?

 

And so you kissed him.

  
And he continued:

\- I don't want to save them. Or, should I say, I don't want to be the one who has to save them. It's not that I don't care for their fate, you know that, I'm still this stupid Gryffindor subjugated to his House. I would like to save them, no, I wish it, I wish it with all my heart. What I don't want is to be the one who will save them or lose them. But I am, Malfoy, I am that one and who would be crazy enough to imagine that I could be able to defeat a mighty sorcerer when I'm just seventeen? ...

I might be trained, people might try their hardest to put in my skull all the abilities it can contain, but nobody is stupid enough not to see the gap between him and me. And yet… And yet, I am the one who has to fight. It’s him or me, do you understand that?

Now Dumbledore is dead and there isn't any shield powerful enough to protect me anymore. I will have to throw myself in that battle, I don’t have anywhere else to flee, - and even Hogwarts will soon be a battlefield. Our spies try the best they can to dissuade Voldemort from attacking us tomorrow. And it’s the same thing every night. How are we supposed to live, Malfoy? ...

How? ...

Voldemort will be here soon and he will kill as many as he will be able to. Voldemort will be here, Malfoy. Voldemort will be here. Yes, you can quiver hearing his name, you can turn white, but I know that a day will come when you are standing next to him, not necessarily because you will have chosen that but rather because you won’t have had that fucking choice. To survive, you will. And that will be because I will have failed. Who would be crazy enough to believe that I could be able to defeat him, tell me? Who? ...

You know Malfoy, destiny really is unfair and that simple phrase, - that could be in a tragedy -, makes me want to puke. It's not fair, Malfoy. It’s not fair that it’s me. Only me. Against him. It's not fair. And me, I just wonder if the people I care about will survive. After me. After that. I'm afraid they won't. Tell me, Malfoy, will Hermione be able to discover the fifth virtue of a phoenix’s blood? …

Will Ron be able to play with The Chudley Cannons? ...

Will Luna ever see a Crumple-Horned Snorkack? ...

Will Neville become Howarts’ Herbology professor? ...

Will Remus ever have a quiet night of sleep?  ...

Will Ginny wake up someday from the coma Parkinson's spell inflicted her? ...

And you, Malfoy, tell me, will you survive? ...

Can you swear to me that you will survive? ...

  
He talked to you for hours and you, you didn't ask anything, even if you didn't understand why he talked so much about fate. You just kissed him every time he seemed to be waiting for an answer. Nothing more.

  
Far too much.

 

X.X.X

 

That’s how you start to remember his voice, in the dark of your Head Boy room. A title that gives you the right to govern Hogwarts, which has begun to look like the jungle these days. Truth be told, his voice frightens you. You wouldn't say that to anyone, would you? Especially not to him. But his voice terrifies you.

 

You squeeze your fists in your jade sheets at that stupid thought. Anyway, is there anything about him that does not frighten you? Truth is, everything about him terrifies you. Everything. From his undisciplined hair’s roots to his sun-kissed skin. It’s just that you would never have considered the irrational fact that you could love to touch him, isn’t it? To lose yourself against him, you who never lost control, who could have thought you would want him so much?

 

And yet not for a moment did you lose your pride. Not for a moment did you feel belittled, not for a moment did you want to hide when he was here, in front of you, with his eyes too green and his smile too conquering, not for a moment did you think to run away from him while he was eating you up in one bite. You were so afraid of him and yet. You wanted to remain dignified and that's how he kissed you.

 

You think about his lips and you squeeze your arms around you. That's strange, you know? It looks like you're hugging yourself. Like you want to replace his arms that are not here tonight, while it's so cold. His arms.

 

You think about his lips and you curse your memory.

You think about his lips and you open your eyes to stop remembering.

You think about his lips and you remember that he is not here tonight.

 

X.X.X

 

You wish you could stop yourself and yet you hope he will knock on your door. Even if it’s already been two weeks since the last time he came to find you, you’re used to it, you know what would happen. You would quickly get up from the bed where, anyway, you can’t fall asleep, and you would go to the door. You would hear him cast an Alohomora spell. You would watch him enter the room and you would close the door and, finally, finally, you would turn your head towards him.

 

His eyes in yours. His being so close to yours.

 

He would say:  
\- Malfoy.  
You would answer in a dubious tone:  
\- Potter.  
Just that.

 

You would not want to let him understand, you would not want to let anything show. You know that only a brief moment of inattention would suffice, the tension’s release, one too many sigh, an escaped - regretted – word. And then you would let everything show. He would hear everything you refuse to say, the breathings that do not fool anyone, the plaintive moans, almost fearful. You do not want him to know you are afraid of him. Terribly afraid. You do not want him to see the weapons you have laid at his feet so long ago.

 

\- Malfoy...  
His tone would be rather amused, in the end.  
Therefore, this time, you would not answer.

 

\- Malfoy...  
He would come closer. Too close. Before, there was always a certain distance between you. Like an insidious barrier between your two bodies, something that seemed to repel you like two magnets. Between you, it had always been electromagnetic. Two forces of the same sign repel each other, even the daftest wizard know that. Now, you think you should have understood from the very beginning that there would be no other outcome for you than this one. His arms. His breath. One way or the other, you were too alike to behave with one another as you should have.

 

\- Malfoy...  
His footsteps would follow one another and, before you would be able to really realise it, he would be so close to you, so close he would burn you, so close his existence would pierce you. There is something in Potter that makes your blood boil, like a mystery, and that takes you back to him as much as it takes him back to you. Something uncontrollable.

  
\- Malfoy...  
He would stay here, his mouth almost on yours but not yet, fleeing at your smallest approach, clever, capricious. His body would be just a few inches away, avoiding your hands’ attempts at catching him, pulling away when you would come closer and yet brushing against them at each try. He would whisper your name in your ear, just to make you shiver, patiently waiting for you to beg.

   
\- Malfoy...  
\- Screw you, Potter.  
\- I'd be delighted.

  
He would put his lips on your neck and then, you would let yourself moan.

 

X.X.X

 

You bury your face in your palms to maintain the illusion. No, you’re not crying. You’d rather die than let yourself indulge in crying. You are a Malfoy, after all. A fucking Malfoy, Potter would say. With the oversized ego that characterises them, and their particular care for the upholding of the rich, pure-blooded, ambitious and cruel family’s stereotypical image. So how could you be crying? You press your knuckles on your eyes to prevent the tears from falling.

 

You just wish you knew why this darkness is doomed to be your enemy, and why the cold comes with it. Why do you feel dead already, when before... when it wasn’t like that before, when everything was different before? Why is that? You used to feel good in the dark. You just want to know, to ask somebody. Maybe even Potter. And for him to answer what you already know.

 

It is easy not to be afraid of the dark while being blind, isn't it? You know it’s what you were. A blind man, a man that lacked something and who didn't know it. You didn't see. How could have the dark frightened you? You didn't distinguish the day, you didn't understand the light, you didn't know its warmth. How could you have been cold? How? But you opened your eyes or, you should say, _he_ opened your eyes.

 

And you loved him.

 

You loved him so how could you close your heart now? You should forget but you can't, you cherish against your will this feeling your education should have protected you from. You loved him, you love him, so how could you not remember the light of his eyes, the warmth of his body and how could you not be afraid of the rest? He is the only place in the world where you belong, the only person you want to be with, the only voice you want to hear. The only world you want to live in.

 

So how could you not freeze to death now?

How?

 

X.X.X

 

One night, he didn’t come to have sex. He laid down on your bed and invited you to join him. You curled up against him, mingling your legs to his. He shivered with pleasure and you felt grateful to him for it. For making you feel important. You stayed like that for a long time - you were staying awake against him, listening to his breathing and wondering how you had hated him so long. You thought he was sleeping. Then, you felt his hands slowly caress your back and you knew he was going to talk, and that your kisses wouldn’t be enough to answer him. You knew that before he opened his mouth, that's true.

 

\- I'm not going to beat him, am I?  
You closed your eyes and wished so hard you knew how to lie to him.  
\- No, Potter. You're not. You're not going to beat him.

He hold you tight and buried his head in the crook of your neck. Neither of you added a word. No, he would not be able to defeat him. You wished you could have said something sweet, something gentle, something that would have comforted him perhaps, just for one second, anything that would have relieved him but you couldn’t. Potter would not be able to defeat The Master. Never. Or, at least, not before thirty years of training. But Potter didn’t have thirty years to spare. Potter was not going to win.

 

Potter would not be the victor.

And this time, you just wanted to scream.

 

X.X.X

 

You had always believed, ever since that first day, since that _let him do_ that had left you filled with both wonder and outrage, that he had never loved you. You were useful to him and you thought it pretty much summed up your relationship. Potter loving Malfoy? That was unthinkable. You were practically part of his enemies, of those who wanted him dead. How could he have loved you? No, you thought he was using you, that he was sure you only wanted to have sex with him and watch him leave during the night or, by chance, at dawn. You had just forgotten that Potter was not a Slytherin. He wasn’t fundamentally self-interested.

 

One night, you were the one to fall asleep against him. And you woke up to the sound of his voice calling you softly.  
\- Malfoy...  
And you understood it all.

 

Just this moment, just like that.  
His tender voice, nothing more.  
Far too much.  
Isn't it?

 

You understood why he didn't want you to love him, why he seemed to push you away whenever you were going to cross the line he had silently drawn, why you shouldn't tell him anything. You understood why Potter had chosen you, **you** , instead of any other, - or rather you understood why Potter hadn’t even had to choose, why everything had seemed so obvious from the start. Why you had read _let him do_ when he had seen _do it._ You understood why he told you what he couldn't tell anybody else, why it was in your arms he had wanted to learn how to lose himself.

 

He loved you.

 

\- Malfoy.  
He smiled.  
\- Potter...  
And you kissed him to prevent him from saying any other word.

  
He wasn't meant to hear it. He didn't want you to say the words that could have crossed so easily the barrier of his own lips. He hadn't wished for you to love him. You weren't meant to. No. You had not to. He didn't want you to mourn him. To want to follow him.

 

He wanted you to survive him.

 

X.X.X

 

And then came that night. The night. He came so early you hesitated before answering the door, even if you were certain he was the one behind it. It wasn’t even eight in the evening and the sun hadn’t totally gone to the other side of the globe. The abnormality of the situation scared you, and even more so when, as soon as you unlocked the door, he latched onto your neck like a man overboard would catch a plank too fin. He didn’t say anything, he pushed you to your bed and you let him do what he wanted. You couldn’t tell him to stop, to calm himself – and to ask him to explain was impossible. You didn’t want to know the reason for those worries, for that urgency. His skin against yours was like a wound, you felt him touch you and you understood that it would never mend. It was the last time.

 

You know that that night, you made love. Your movements were too jolting, too unconscious, too urgent, and too relentless. You were both inconsolable. He was going. You weren’t supposed to follow him, not yet. He didn’t say he loved you but you heard it better than if he had spoken. You felt it, you lived it.

 

You stayed a long while facing each other in the dark – but the dark wasn’t the one scaring you. You don’t think that neither of you whispered anything. What was there to say? You knew. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had surely decided the day for his attack on Hogwarts and the Order of the Phoenix had to try and take him by surprise before he reached the school. But the only weapon of the Order was Potter. He had to go. Both of you knew it. And neither of you thought for one second that he was coming back.

 

Hours passed. You wanted to stop time.

Who could have?

 

\- Malfoy, I'm going. We have to be there at dawn and... I'm going.

 

He stood up and sat on the edge of the bed. His shoulders were low - you imprisoned them in your arms. You didn't want him to go. To let him go when you knew he could come back, that, you had learned to do. But you weren't able to let him go when he was going to lose. When you were going to lose him.

   
\- Malfoy, I'm going.

 

You rested your head on his collarbone and you felt him cry silently. You tightened your arms and pressed your lips on his skin, your final gesture of tenderness. You stayed a moment like that, then you slowly let your hands slide until they fell on the sheets. He was free and he was going. He stood, dressed up, and went to the door - you almost begged him not to leave you. He seemed to hear you even if you hadn't let anything slip away from you and he came back to you, kneeled before the bed in front of you. You lowered you head towards him.

 

\- Malfoy, I'm going. I'm going.

  
You stared at him and you let a long moment come and pass before simply answering him:  
\- Then go away.  
And in his eyes, you knew he knew.  
  
He stood and, this time. He crossed the door.

 

X.X.X

 

There are so many things you would like to tell him while he's not here in those sheets that are so cold without him. You would like to confess everything, you have nothing to lose, you forgot the value of the Malfoys' name and their honor, you are afraid, you are alone and you miss him so what good could it bring to bury your head in the sand? You wish you could whisper _I love you_ in his neck, where his skin is so tender, and then lower along his ribs. You wish you could live once more your shared passionate embrace while, savoring, you would whisper your words to his ear. You wish he could hear you cry your emotions, this hope that you didn't want to feel and with which he filled you up when he came to see you. You wish so hard you could whisper the words of love he taught you, to both your expenses. You wish you could share with him the tenderness that always was superfluous between you. Or dare do all the things that felt improper, out of place. You wish he could see you like this, almost crying – but not yet, not totally – in your bed and in this terrifying shadow. For him to know what you are, what you become when he's not here.

 

You never said it to him. You never said to him all you wanted to tell him.

And you realize that, even together, even together you were alone.

 

Immeasurably alone.

 

X.X.X

 

\- Potter.

You don't know why your mouth absolutely needs to let go of his name, since calling him has no meaning anymore. You don't know either why your hand grabs the emerald amulet supposed to protect you that he gave to you. You no longer want to be saved, to be spared.

 

\- Potter.  
You cry, even if you'd prefer to die.  
It's just that he said you had to survive. He made you promise you would.

 

\- Potter.  
You shiver and you cry in the insufferable cold of your sheets.  
You know you won't be able to bear the mark that is to burn your arm tomorrow.  
There are some promises you can't keep. Even for him.

 

\- Potter.  
You moan and you cry like a little boy. You call him.  
You wish he was coming back.

 

\- Potter.  
Even if you know he won't come back this time.

 

_Immeasurably alone._

fin.


End file.
